Chinese Analysts on Cyber Lessons From Russia's War in Ukraine

Sunny Cheung writes in Jamestown’s China Brief about how Chinese military analysts are mining Russia’s cyber campaign in Ukraine for doctrine. Their verdict is that Russia underperformed because of institutional flaws rather than capability gaps, pushing the PRC toward unified command structures, “independent and controllable” indigenous technology, and hardened critical-infrastructure defense backed by nationwide cyber exercises. Microsoft, looking at the same war from the defender’s side, credited Ukraine’s resilience in its June 2022 report to moving government data into the public cloud, threat intelligence and public-private collaboration, and concluded that cyber defenses had “proven stronger than offensive cyber capabilities.” The lesson China took away is less “cyber doesn’t matter” and more “do it with a better org chart.”